Songbook: Volume Six

(Last week I had a comment on my blog on an old Songbook posting. I realized that I hadn’t written one for more than a year and I thought that since I’m now posting videos that this might make writing about a song a little easier. Here we go.)

Perfection is a funny thing. We all strive for it, whether we admit it or not. No one wants to screw up, everyone wants to be the star. We want to look the best and be the best at everything that we do. The fact that I come up short drives me up the wall because I can never figure out why can’t I just be perfect.

The thing is people who actually are perfect are amongst the most boring people alive to the point where there perfection ruins themselves. Take a model for instance. She might epitomize beauty, every single pore on her body can be considered magnificent, but you wouldn’t want to date her. Heck, a lot of the time you wouldn’t even consider her to be pretty. Flawless yes, pretty no. For some reason I always use Celine Dion as an example of this. She has a perfect voice that is completely forgettable. There is absolutely nothing there to latch on to.

What I love about Beth Orton (and it’s a long list) is that she is the most wonderfully flawed person I’ve ever seen. Her voice isn’t crystal clear, it has nooks and crannies and odd little corners that you never noticed before. There’s something about the range she sings in and the tone of her voice that just stays with you. Not in a humming the chorus when you leave the car sort of way. More like the song has become a part of your soul.

(I even extend it to her look. Beth has been on my Perfect Mate list for years even though I don’t know if people would consider her to be conventionally pretty. It’s just that even in this video she can throw a glance that makes me want to marry her (except that I think she already is married).)

In the end what I look for in music is not perfection but passion. I don’t need to hear technical mastery. It can bore me in less than an hour. But someone like Beth can sing in a key that only she knows and I am just spellbound by it. Passion doesn’t always mean jumping around on stage, playing full volume or begging the crowd for a reaction. Often it is just putting your heart and soul out there for the world to see even if it is not the image that most people would have originally drawn.

“Stolen Car” is a track from the wonderful and underappreciated disc Central Reservation. It’s another song about relationships as that is what most songs in the world are. Is the meaning important? I’m not sure it is. I just know that every time someone asks me who my favorite artists are Beth Orton always makes the list. Flaws are a wonderful thing.